Choice of Music
by HollanderBlue
Summary: Shinji collects himself after his first encounter with the Teutonic Menace


Many thanks to the SME, who convinced me to sit down and write this, and also convinced me to watch EVA in the first place.

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You know how it goes. I don't own one itty-bitty-teeny-tiny chunk of Evangelion. If I make any money off this, I'll give it to the owners of the copyright. Game on!

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"Choice of Music" by HollanderBlue

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Ikari Shinji blinked. The mini-cassette in his portable player had reached the end of side one. It was a new tape, and the abrupt interruption had surprised him; he'd listened to his old one so many times that he could usually anticipate the reversal in play direction to within less than a millisecond.

Not so this time. After a moment's fumbling, he hit the rewind button instead. As the tiny tape spun itself back to its beginning, he reflected on the circumstances that had brought him to his new choice in late-night listening material…

It had started with a boat ride.

Technically, it had started with the flight out _to_ the boat in question, but that was immaterial. The atmospheric portion of the journey had been uneventful, even pleasant. And in Shinji's life, things that were pleasant, while rare, seldom had any sort of impact.

No, the real events of the day had begun after landing on the U.N. fleet's aircraft carrier.

Shinji had never been aboard a naval vessel before, so that was unique in and of itself. The first thing that had hit him was the smell. A nearly choking aroma of baking asphalt (or whatever the black, gooey stuff on the deck had been) and high-yield jet fuel had blasted over him, stirred up by the engines of multiple aircraft. The stench had been nearly dizzying, and he'd not yet recovered from the shock to his annoyingly fragile system (or from his irritation at the reminder of his frail constitution) when an even more disorienting hammerblow had struck him in the form of a very strangely accented voice.

Well, to be truthful the voice hadn't been the thing. It was the person attached to the voice. Which, in this case, was a redhead in a yellow sundress.

Things had gone downhill from there.

The girl was undeniably cute. Okay, that was being minimalist. She was HOT. Shinji hadn't been exposed to much in the way of red hair and blue eyes before; hell, he'd never paid much attention to girls at ALL, truth be told- well, there was Rei, but some days you couldn't be sure if she was a girl or an iguana… but ANYWAY… yes. Hot. His first impression of the girl had been that she was exotically beautiful, in a nearly alien sort of way. True, her hair was coarser and more unruly than that of Japanese girls, and her skin wasn't so milky smooth…

Wait a minute. When had he noticed the texture of her skin and hair? That took close observation-

Oh yes. In the EVA. But that was getting ahead of things, wasn't it. 

To make a long story short, he'd been struck by her looks. But then there'd been the show-and-slap festivities with poor Toji, and that had put Shinji RIGHT off of the rude German girl. He valued consensus, and he hated confrontation, and this person definitely seemed to have opposite leanings. For that matter, she scared him.

Or so he kept telling himself for the next hour- each time he caught himself staring at her.

He really didn't understand what it was. Sure, she was pretty, but Misato was pretty too, and her behavior really DID repulse him. The German girl's comportment was boorish even by Misato's standards. It should have sickened him. But he just kept finding his eyes drawn back to her.

The tape clacked noisily at him. The rewind was finished. Shinji thumbed the play button, and the strange sounds of the cassette filled his headphones once more. He listened intently, mouthing the words echoing in his ears even as he continued to think about the day.

What was it about her that fascinated him so?

Perhaps it was that her offensiveness seemed so _natural_. When she was angry, fire flashed in her eyes. Her flaming hair and harsh facial expressions seemed tailor-made for her ability to dispense invective. And her confidence- oh, but she was confident! And yet not, at the same time. The truly confident were not so needful of chances to prove themselves. The truly confident didn't have to seek out ways to display their knowledge or prowess. They knew their abilities, and that was enough. This girl was certainly NOT the quietly assured type. She sought every confrontation she could find, from the verbal to the life-threatening, always looking to win and prove her superiority…

No, she wasn't so confident as all that, after all. But the way she went about addressing her fears made Shinji jealous. He was a doormat. He knew it, and accepted it. By offering no challenge to life, he hoped to not _be_ challenged. This girl went out of her way to find challenges. Her way was far more dangerous- and a quite a bit less pleasant to be around- but she was so much more _alive_ than Shinji could ever imagine himself being.

And, of course, there was still the underlying fact that she was HOT.

Shinji contemplated that fact for a while. He had plenty of material to use as fuel for that particular fire. After all, he'd basically wrapped his arms and legs around her when they'd pulled the controls together and gotten the Angel's mouth open…

What had really boggled him about that moment was the synch ratio they'd achieved. And the truly funny thing about it, the absolutely terribly ironic thing about the whole situation, was that at the instant the mission debrief had told him they'd achieved their highest synch…

Shinji was relatively sure that at that moment, he'd been distracted by the feel of her body against his instead of concentrating on the life-threatening decision point bearing down on them.

He had NO idea what THAT meant. The potentials, though, were the stuff of juvenile fantasies. If grinding up against her lead to high numbers, wouldn't sex in the cockpit ensure the defeat of any opposing force in the universe?

Shinji blinked rapidly. He'd just managed to shock himself with his own thoughts.

Then he realized that she was now living _here_, in the same apartment he was, and that they were sleeping under the same roof, and showering in the same shower-

He held _that_ thought for a long, long moment.

Shinji shook his head. He must be hitting the height of puberty or something. His libido was running away with him. He'd barely even met this girl, and all she'd done to this point was yell at him and nearly get him killed. She was cute, yes. He felt some attraction to her fiery attitude (despite all logic and reason to the contrary!), but a gnat was also attracted to a bug zapper. The end result of acting on the attraction was probably similar. He needed to get a grip.

The phrase brought to mind an image of gripping certain things on _her._ Shinji sighed and banished the image. He needed to masturbate more frequently or something; this was getting ridiculous.

And besides. Even if the insanely unlikely possibilities all came true, he'd never even have the courage to ask her to lunch.

Which was probably for the best. Her abrasive personality was sure to wear on him after a bit, wasn't it?

He decided he wasn't going to make any progress on his tape tonight and put it away. He was supposed to be on "crew rest," anyway. Misato insisted he get a good night's sleep after each battle. She claimed it helped the body recover from the exertions of combat, and Shinji was sure she was right. He closed his eyes and drifted off into a set of dreams entirely different- and more hormonal- than his usual.

In the morning, after Shinji had gone to school, Misato wandered into his room looking for a notepad she'd misplaced. As she rummaged, she noticed that he'd left his cassette player out. Misato had always wanted to know what the heck he was listening to, and she wasn't much on the proprieties of privacy to begin with. She hit the "eject" button and read the tapes' label.

"What the… 'Conversational German'? I didn't know Shinji was studying languages…"

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End! Hope you enjoyed! J This was my first, so any yelling, screaming, biting, pinching, spanking… just kidding, gotcha!… anyway, any feedback is welcome! Hollanderblue@hotmail.com


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